Answering questions can be a bother. Even if you’re not hounded by the press for some juicy scoops, you may be presented with situations that would require you to dodge questions. Speakers do have several tricks up their sleeve in order to duck those tricky and complicated ones. Instead of implicating themselves through possibly mucky questions, it’s a lot better to duck them entirely. Here’s a list of the things you can do to duck questions.

• Change the subject.
• Point to higher authority.
• Reply with general answers.
• Blast the question’s relevance.
• Reply that the answer is classified information.
• Present multiple answers without singling one out as the ‘right one’.
• Comment heartily about the topic in general without giving a specific answer.